SCIENCE & CULTURE REQUIRE THE "PARA" and interactive HIGHER REALMS

Non-duality in physics begins with a wordless inspiration leading to an integral view that makes room for all of reality, including higher realms of being and an expanded concept of what “matter” and “substance” may be.

Akira Tonomura showed that quantum potentials exist and must be of a level of reality that is not directly detected by scientific apparatus albeit having definite physical consequences. This level may be (in relation to our ordinarily perceived physical reality) non-local. Is it actual? Is it "real?" It depends on how we look at it. Is it material? Yes, in the sense of a kind of substance. Can it be “disclosed?” Yes, but as far as we know…indirectly, through effects on regular physical reality. It stands before or below the physical form and what we think of "physical" force field vectors. Is it physicalist? No, not anymore in the crude mechanical sense or its vestiges found in modern physics and in the mind of "reality=physicalism" scientists. Is it culturally promising? Yes, as it may allow “realist” “experimental scientists to open up to the possibility of a series of deeper interconnected worlds at least partially coinciding with “paranormal” phenomena, survival of bodily death, extra dimensional-interdimensional extraterrestrial activity and energy extracted from the active vacuum.

Materialism doesn't have to equal “physicalism” under a broader view of what "matter" and "substance" might be. At this point in integral theorizing we need to consider that a deeper kind of materialism is not just compatible with non physicalist models but with approaches that include the material existence of other realms. Integral Theory proposes the universal fact that all things or holons (realms of reality included) have (at least some degree of) Objective Exteriors. These other realms would have EXTERIORS, not physical as in the Gross Realm we ordinarily perceive and tend to conceive as the only reality that matters. These other realms while undetected could be considered as ""potential" and when detected as "actual" in relation to our ordinary "physical" experience. In other words, they are REAL but can be thought about in two broad ways. This is a SUBTLETY and distinction that needs to be considered in future INTEGRAL modeling that relates our known physical universe with other realms. If we do so, Integral Theory could become more scientifically predictive in due time and not just act as an integral set of principles and guidelines.

Scientists are slowly recognizing that other realms and realities are possible and necessary even for understanding how our physical universe works, its fundamental laws, constants and other values tuned for life. That there is a program and a programmer is becoming more and more plausible as chance is not and self-origination out of nothing makes little sense. Both the quantum energies allowed by the Uncertainty Principle and the quantum potentials are not "nothing."

The quantum potentials that are sometimes considered as subjacent to "real" physical phenomena (having to do more with vectors fields and forces exerted over detectable charges and masses) may be the "tip of an iceberg" located in a realm that programs physical universes. These potentials may be subsets of a higher mental-informing realm whose exteriors (whose matter) respond to mental causes and is itself derived from a causal realm of first principles...all of which derive from an Absolute Non Dual Transcendent Creator outside not just of space and time of the "Physical Realm" but of all logical possibilities of the Mental Realm and of the first principles of the Causal Realm.

I'm familiar with Ken Wilber's work. It purports to offer a model that considers all main aspects of reality under a unifying pattern. All events seem to manifest in four distinct ways that can be observed and acknowledged through induction or deduced from a logic of complementarity. This pattern that connects applies to all known forms of knowledge and their disclosing methods. Nonetheless, I think that for it to really be more "integral" and also helpful and predictive to an emerging science in need to a major metaphysical revision it must now include a plausible physics of inter-realm activity. The barriers for this to take place are a psychological and cultural attitude in the scientific community and -I believe- even in the integral theory community against things "paranormal" mostly on the grounds of earning establishment credibility.

The so-called “paranormal” is misunderstood as “non-scientific” (or as non-verifiable, therefore, non-scientific) but its interaction with our ordinary way of experiencing the world (an inter-realm interaction) may follow (besides the important patterns spoken about by Wilber) other scientific (even “material”) laws which we may also discover under an expanded scientific-metaphysical approach. The interaction (in fact, a mechanism which sustains our ordinary world) may be taking place all the time but only when combined realm spaces momentarily form modifying the ordinary characteristics of our known space-time realm, we experience what we think of as an “anomaly” or a “paranormal” event. Regardless of the uneasiness with the otherworldly (that limits human experience to physical experience and often to partially valid but incomplete religious explanations), Wilber's model borrows non-dual experiential approaches from contemplative traditions and –along with these- briefly touches on the possibility that other realms of being exist. Furthermore, even working under his more recent "post-metaphysical" approach (that asks for individual and collective verification of what will be accepted as serious data), I think that there are important patterns that may be discerned for inter-realm interactions, patterns which have physical consequences and can thus be actually observed, disclosed, “actualized” (into our experience) may expand the Integral Model. Actually our whole human experience and not just “reality” and “ontology” may necessarily include not just all of the so called “quadrants” or aspects of manifest reality as in Wilber’s model, but how all of the realms together generate the “FIVE BOUNDARIES” through which we experience the illusion of duality and the imperative need to constantly choose in order to evolve (see Oleg Linetsky’s work on this matter at: http://www.integralworld.net/linetsky4.html).

I think that, to figure out what these patterns may be like, we also need to take a fresh look into classical metaphysical thinking such as Aristotle’s concept of “potentia” (as what a holon can manifest or may be actually manifesting in another non directly detected realm) and “energeia,” (as actuality or a holon as something happening) and to integrate aspects of Platonism and Plotinian emergentism with the philosophy of substance, of multiple bodies (hylic pluralism), Vedanta, serious esoteric models and the possibilities offered by quantum physics and cosmology. That would add a bold but serious outlook to many current integral models which through their denial of the “otherworldly” and its effect in our daily lives, could all be considered “integrative” rather than genuinely “integral.”

The nature of our physical universe may depend on a programming originating in a mental level of reality sometimes called the “Subtle Realm” (following Indian Vedanta philosophy). Regarding this particular, look into the work of Professor James Sylvester Gates on what he calls "Adinkras." This is serious theoretical science from a well-established contributor of Superstring Theory. Now, also the work of Akira Tonomura http://www.hitachi.com/rd/fellow_tonomura.html is related with David Bohm's (of the Aharonov-Bohm Effect) deeper levels of reality with physical consequence but there also is other experimental evidence regarding the primacy of non-vector potentials. I think that some of the free-energy research (theoretically explained by Thomas E. Bearden) is also related and I think that the way ahead (however futuristic it may still sound today) is a further integration of scientific and metaphysical principles that can lead to practical predictions, experiments, devices and results. Even the concept of a deeper, subjacent holographic, information “field” held (with particular differences) by Lynn Mac Taggart, Ervin Laszlo and by astronaut Edgar Mitchell may be conceived as possessing many deeper and broader levels which in turn may correspond to what in Vedanta and in some Western esoteric systems is called the Subtle and Causal realms. In other words, “the field” may not only include non-local quantum potentials but may also not need to be limited to an expanded but apparently still physicalist view.

All of this would change the popular understanding of what the word "metaphysical" entails. It doesn't have to simply remain speculative or visionary and necessarily related to a dogmatic religious or esoteric approach (shunned by “no-nonsense” realist-physicalist empirical scientists). In fact, several forms of interactive disclosure procedures can be implemented to disclose and interpret the so called "Subtle Realm." The “three eyes of knowledge” proposed by St. Bonaventure may apply not just while we live mostly experientially focused in the Gross Physical Realm but –altogether- to all of the three basic realms. This would entail material, mental and spiritual disclosures of knowledge available in all three realms and would be a more “integral” approach. Off course, since most Integral Theorists and students related to Ken Wilber’s work tend to have a psychological and self-development, spiritual inclination and/or social application concerns (all of which are quite valid and necessary) the physics of inter-realm interaction is not given much attention to. It is not understood that “physics” need not be limited to the “Physical” Realm but can include other kinds of objective, material aspects also expected to exist in other more primary and necessary realms. It is not understood that to be “integral” all of these realms (with which we are constitutionally made of) need to be recognized and embraced much more thoroughly.

Perhaps the concept of an extended “Physis” or “Phusis” (nature) needs to be developed beyond the ordinary interpretation of the Aristotelian focus on physical substance. We have to understand that “substance” (a substance that can be scientifically studied) transcends the ordinary “physical” world. Perhaps the Indian concept of a universal “space-forming” “Akasha” or universal substance that can generate Physical worlds primarily responding to exterior causes, Subtle-Mental worlds primarily responding to conscious and unconscious subjective causes and Causal/principial worlds primarily responding to spiritual causes needs to be adopted, along with the metaphysical rules that may govern their interaction, interpenetration and mutual immanence. Perhaps three kinds of “logic” apply to these relations (causal “either-or,” systemic “both-and” and transcendental “neither-nor”) and to be both objectively scientific and metaphysically accurate in a broader scientific-metaphysical view we’ll need to include them all appropriately. This may sound too airy fairy, unreal and complicated but it is more a matter of having some cultural back-up, learning a few more integrative concepts and being inspired by an integral attitude.

I think that Integral Theory is a great step forward beyond previous exclusivist approaches but, nonetheless, as integral theorists we need to offer more than guidelines (however significant it may be that they arose as a unifying approach in the first place). We need an integral theoretical way to make predictions within the more advanced areas of quantum physics and cosmology requiring a non-physicalist approximation. The way science is developing (with theoretically needed speculations about other universes in the "Multiverse" or, for instance, objectively valid UFO research and the non-scientifically orthodox but ever-increasing "ghost research" evidence of electromagnetic interactions with entities in sub-regions of the Subtle-Mental Realm) require an expanded approach to Integral Theory. In fact, Integral Theory -if presented as a Theory of Everything or as the most advanced Meta theoretical framework requires a bolder approach to truly be at the forefront of all this converging knowledge. A unique worldwide cultural evolution and revolution could take place not only by connecting our awareness to the non-dual Ground of all being but when we collectively discover the inner workings of what we call “REALITY” in a way that can produce scientific evidence and technologies.

What do you know about the theory put forth by Giulio Tononi at the University of Wisconsin-Madison? He is advancing a sophisticated information theory account of consciousness called "integrated information theory." (IIT)